The road to the first, fully active and more stable human insulin variant with an additional disulfide bond.

Insulin, a small peptide hormone, is crucial in maintaining blood glucose homeostasis. The stability and activity of the protein is directed by an intricate system involving disulfide bonds to stabilize the active monomeric species and by their non-covalent oligomerization. All known insulin variants in vertebrates consist of two peptide chains and have six cysteine residues, which form three disulfide bonds, two of them link the two chains and a third is an intra-chain bond in the A-chain. This classical insulin fold appears to have been conserved over half a billion years of evolution. We addressed the question whether a human insulin variant with four disulfide bonds could exist and be fully functional. In this review, we give an overview of the road to engineering four-disulfide bonded insulin analogs. During our journey, we discovered several active four disulfide bonded insulin analogs with markedly improved stability and gained insights into the instability of analogs with seven cysteine residues, importance of dimerization for stability, insulin fibril formation process, and the conformation of insulin binding to its receptor. Our results also open the way for new strategies in the development of insulin biopharmaceuticals.

Expression, receptor binding, and biophysical characterization of guinea pig insulin desB30: a monomeric insulin variant.

Here we report, for the first time, the heterologous expression of desB30 guinea pig insulin (GI desB30) in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. The affinities of GI desB30 for the insulin receptor A and the IGF-I receptor were also quantified for the first time. Small-angle X-ray scattering and analytical ultracentrifugation studies confirmed that GI desB30 did not form dimers or hexamers, in contrast to human insulin. Size-exclusion chromatography connected to inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry revealed that GI desB30 has affinity towards several divalent metal ions. These studies did not indicate the formation of any larger structures of GI desB30 in the presence of various divalent metal ions, but did indicate that GI desB30 has an affinity towards Mn, Co, and Cu ions. Finally, the low affinity for the insulin receptor and the very low affinity for the IGF-I receptor by GI desB30 were quantified.

Additional disulfide bonds in insulin: Prediction, recombinant expression, receptor binding affinity, and stability.

The structure of insulin, a glucose homeostasis-controlling hormone, is highly conserved in all vertebrates and stabilized by three disulfide bonds. Recently, we designed a novel insulin analogue containing a fourth disulfide bond located between positions A10-B4. The N-terminus of insulin's B-chain is flexible and can adapt multiple conformations. We examined how well disulfide bond predictions algorithms could identify disulfide bonds in this region of insulin. In order to identify stable insulin analogues with additional disulfide bonds, which could be expressed, the Cß cut-off distance had to be increased in many instances and single X-ray structures as well as structures from MD simulations had to be used. The analogues that were identified by the algorithm without extensive adjustments of the prediction parameters were more thermally stable as assessed by DSC and CD and expressed in higher yields in comparison to analogues with additional disulfide bonds that were more difficult to predict. In contrast, addition of the fourth disulfide bond rendered all analogues resistant to fibrillation under stress conditions and all stable analogues bound to the insulin receptor with picomolar affinities. Thus activity and fibrillation propensity did not correlate with the results from the prediction algorithm. Statement: A fourth disulfide bond has recently been introduced into insulin, a small two-chain protein containing three native disulfide bonds. Here we show that a prediction algorithm predicts four additional four disulfide insulin analogues which could be expressed. Although the location of the additional disulfide bonds is only slightly shifted, this shift impacts both stability and activity of the resulting insulin analogues.

Insulin analog with additional disulfide bond has increased stability and preserved activity.

Insulin is a key hormone controlling glucose homeostasis. All known vertebrate insulin analogs have a classical structure with three 100% conserved disulfide bonds that are essential for structural stability and thus the function of insulin. It might be hypothesized that an additional disulfide bond may enhance insulin structural stability which would be highly desirable in a pharmaceutical use. To address this hypothesis, we designed insulin with an additional interchain disulfide bond in positions A10/B4 based on Cα-Cα distances, solvent exposure, and side-chain orientation in human insulin (HI) structure. This insulin analog had increased affinity for the insulin receptor and apparently augmented glucodynamic potency in a normal rat model compared with HI. Addition of the disulfide bond also resulted in a 34.6°C increase in melting temperature and prevented insulin fibril formation under high physical stress even though the C-terminus of the B-chain thought to be directly involved in fibril formation was not modified. Importantly, this analog was capable of forming hexamer upon Zn addition as typical for wild-type insulin and its crystal structure showed only minor deviations from the classical insulin structure. Furthermore, the additional disulfide bond prevented this insulin analog from adopting the R-state conformation and thus showing that the R-state conformation is not a prerequisite for binding to insulin receptor as previously suggested. In summary, this is the first example of an insulin analog featuring a fourth disulfide bond with increased structural stability and retained function.

Novel covalently linked insulin dimer engineered to investigate the function of insulin dimerization.

An ingenious system evolved to facilitate insulin binding to the insulin receptor as a monomer and at the same time ensure sufficient stability of insulin during storage. Insulin dimer is the cornerstone of this system. Insulin dimer is relatively weak, which ensures dissociation into monomers in the circulation, and it is stabilized by hexamer formation in the presence of zinc ions during storage in the pancreatic ß-cell. Due to the transient nature of insulin dimer, direct investigation of this important form is inherently difficult. To address the relationship between insulin oligomerization and insulin stability and function, we engineered a covalently linked insulin dimer in which two monomers were linked by a disulfide bond. The structure of this covalent dimer was identical to the self-association dimer of human insulin. Importantly, this covalent dimer was capable of further oligomerization to form the structural equivalent of the classical hexamer. The covalently linked dimer neither bound to the insulin receptor, nor induced a metabolic response in vitro. However, it was extremely thermodynamically stable and did not form amyloid fibrils when subjected to mechanical stress, underlining the importance of oligomerization for insulin stability.

Identification of anchor points for chemical modification of a small cysteine-rich protein by using a cysteine scan.

Chemical modifications of proteins are increasingly important in the development of protein drugs with fine-tuned properties. Regioselective modification, such as the chemoselective alkylation of an unpaired cysteine residue, is a prerequisite for obtaining homogenous protein products. The introduction of an unpaired Cys into the Cys-rich protein, insulin, was investigated by using a Cys scan. This was challenging as the introduced Cys could interfere with insulin's three existing disulfide bonds. However, eight insulin precursors were expressed in Saccharomyces cerevisiae with good yields. Although extensive post-translational modifications of the unpaired Cys were observed, the majority could be removed by selective reduction. An example Cys(7) insulin analogue was modified with a PEGylated maleimide moiety. The new variant was active in in vitro and in vivo models. Our results show that even small Cys-rich proteins can be expressed with additional unpaired Cys in meaningful yields and further chemically modified, while maintaining their biological activity.